After Girish Karnad, Taslima Nasreen rips into V S Naipaul

Reverberations in the literary world are still being felt a day after playwrightGirish Karnad slammed Nobel laureate V S Naipaulon Friday. Karnad attacked the organisers of the Mumbai Literature Fest, slamming them for honouring Naipaul as Karnad accused the novelist of being ‘anti-Muslim’.While Karnad has been criticised by the organisers of the literary festival for targetting Naipaul, the playwright has found unexpected support from Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen.

Nasreen on Saturday tweeted that Naipaul was an Islamophobe. “Girish Karnad is right, Naipaul is tone deaf, wrote nothing about Indian music in his big books on India. Naipaul is a mean Islamophobe writer,” the Bangladeshi writer posted on the micro-blogging website.

She also called Naipaul ‘a male chauvinistic pig’ for his earlier statement claiming that he found no woman worth his literary match. Responding to a tweet she claimed, while “Girish Karnad is neither a Hindu hater nor Muslim hater, Naipaul is definitely Muslim hater.” She added that Naipaul would not have been so famous if he had written his books in one of the regional languages of India. “If Naipaul wrote his books in one of the Indian regional languages, he would have been an unknown writer even in India,” she said.

Responding to some tweets from Naipaul’s fans after her tweet, Taslima said, “Literary giant? Because he got Nobel Prize? So many worthless dumbos got Nobel prize,” Taslima alleged.

How the whole tiff started:
On October 31, Mumbai Lit Fest organisers felicitated Naipaul with the Life Time achievement award.On October 2, Karnad who was supposed to talk in a sessions which focused on theatre and his life and work, however did not speak on the subject calling it ‘boring’ and instead went on target the organisers for felicitating Naipaul earlier.

Calling Naipaul ‘tone deaf’, Karnad said, “Now Mr Naipaul has written three books on India. If you read them, you find that not even one of them contains any reference to music. He has gone through the whole of India without responding to Indian music. I think that only means that he is tone deaf,”

He further claimed that Naipaul was anti-Muslim, “Now again, what he says is predictable, which is that the Muslims destroyed Indian architecture that everything went to pot. They were the raiders, they were the destroyers, and you have to look at any building to see what happened during the Muslim regime,” Karnad said.

In fact what could cause further controversy, she further ranted and also attacked Mother Teresa when she agreed with another tweeter who questioned Teresa getting a Nobel. “Teresa did everything to make her Jesus happy. She let patients suffer, didn’t give medicine,” Taslima said.

Taslima Nasreen’s comments are surely going to ensure that Karnad’s comments on Naipaul will be alive for a long while.

Meanwhile reacting to Karnad’s comments, festival director Anil Dharker released a statement slamming the playwright. “We were all taken aback by Girish Karnad’s attack on V S Naipaul. After all, we had invited him (Karnad) to speak about his journey in theatre, and Naipaul had nothing to do with that,” Dharker said.

Dharker refuted Karnad’s claim that Naipaul was anti-Muslim, “As for Naipaul being anti-Muslim, his wife Nadira is Muslim and her two children are being brought up as Muslims. Naipaul writes about how Muslim rulers and invaders of the past destroyed temples, monuments and so on. That’s historical fact, and who can argue against that? That does not make Naipaul anti-Muslim.”

“I also resent the implication that we, as organisers, are somehow not secular. I am a Trustee of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) led by Teesta Setalvad, and we have been fighting over 200 cases in court against (Narendra) Modi and his government over the 2002 Gujarat violence,” Dharker said in his